It has been the common practice in the past to apply dry fertilizer to a lawn by pushing a drop or broadcast type spreader back and forth across the area to be fertilized. A problem with this procedure has been the necessity to overlap one pass with the next in order to assure that strips of the lawn are not missed. Of course, overlapping has the disadvantage of laying down narrow strips of a double dose of the fertilizer which can burn the lawn or leave it unsightly for some time.
Another problem with the prior art spreaders has been the necessity to open and close the fertilizer feed orifices at the end of each pass across the lawn as well as to close the orifices whenever the spreader is stopped to prevent excessive dropping of the fertilizer particles. This problem is more acute where the spreader is mounted to a power lawn mower and is thus continually vibrated by the mower.
A further problem with the prior art spreaders has been the fact that fertilizer is dropped from such spreaders whether the spreader is being pushed forward or pulled backward as occurs, for example, when fertilizer is being spread around trees and bushes.